Boise State, UCF announce home-and-home series for 2021 and 2023
The top two Group of Five programs in the country have agreed to a home-and-home series.
UCF and Boise State announced Tuesday that they will play one another in 2021 and 2023. The 2021 game will be played in Orlando in Week 1 with the exact date yet to be determined. UCF will then travel to Boise in 2023 for a game on Sept. 9. Those games will mark the first two meetings between the programs.
"We are excited to have this series on the schedule, and thrilled to be able to bring our fans another marquee game on The Blue," Boise State athletic director Curt Apsey said. "I believe this is a match-up that college football fans throughout the country want to see, and one that our student-athletes will be excited to play."
Boise State has routinely been winning double-digit games since its jump up to the Division I-A level in the late 1990s. The Broncos won eight WAC titles between 2002 and 2010 — including undefeated seasons under Chris Petersen in 2006 and 2009 — before a move to the Mountain West, where they won three more conference crowns.
While Boise State has been performing at a high level for much longer, nobody can deny the magnitude run UCF is currently on. Before its loss to Pittsburgh over the weekend, UCF had not lost a regular season game since Nov. 26, 2016. From there, the Knights won 29 of their next 30 games, including a win over Auburn in the 2017 Peach Bowl — a win that led athletic director Danny White to declare the Knights the national champions.
The program’s only loss since late 2016 before Saturday was to LSU in last year’s Fiesta Bowl. That’s a hell of a run, and now these two programs, who look primed to duke it out to play in New Years Six bowl games for years to come, will get to battle it out on the field.
UCF will also play BYU
For these games to come to fruition, Boise State had to move some others around. BSU’s 2021 game at Houston has been moved to 2025 while a 2023 home game against Rice will be played in 2029.
For UCF, the Boise State announcement was one of several scheduling agreements revealed on Tuesday. The Knights also announced a home-and-home series with BYU for 2023 (in Orlando) and 2024 (in Provo).
"BYU and Boise State represent big-time strength-of-schedule games for our program based on their records and top-25 rankings in recent years. We are committed to continue to schedule attractive, meaningful football games both for our fans and student-athletes. BYU and Boise State are both power programs, and we're proud to play them," White said in a press release.
UCF and BYU have met twice in the past: a 24-17 win by the Cougars in Provo in 2011 and a 31-24 overtime victory by the Knights in Orlando in 2014.
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